[Peace] NYT: House Passes $738 Billion Military Bill With Space Force and Parental Leave

[Robert Naiman]

We got stomped. Of course we were losing the vote. The deal was cut, the
fix was in. But we didn't need to lose it this badly. 60 Rs voted against
the Engel-McCaul resolution on Syria. We should have gotten at least 60
votes, and we would have if the first alerts went on Monday. One day is not
enough time to mobilize our forces. We need two days. We knew on Monday
what the outcome was, we did not need to wait for the conference report to
come out. And we knew how to finesse the fact that we hadn't seen the
conference report, that language was in the alert that was drafted on
Sunday: "vote NO on any NDAA that doesn't end the Yemen war." This lesson
needs to be nailed to the wall. We need two days.

Silver linings department:

1. The story that Barbara Lee and Jim McGovern are in charge of peace
issues in the House is over. They did nothing to help us, absolutely
nothing. Barbara Lee put out a statement after the vote. That's ridiculous.
People who cared put out statements before the vote. That's why Ro Khanna
is quoted in the New York Times article and Jim McGovern isn't, why Ilhan
Omar is quoted in the New York Times article and Barbara Lee isn't. Jim
McGovern and Barbara Lee can't be in charge of peace issues in the House
because they're too close to Pelosi. End of story.

2. The story that there was an address for this besides Nancy Pelosi is
over. Adam Smith did what Nancy Pelosi told him to do. If we wanted a
different outcome, we needed to move Pelosi. We moved Pelosi before. We got
her to co-sponsor the Khanna Yemen WPR. We did that by throwing up a
demonstration outside her office in San Francisco. That's the kind of thing
we needed to do if we wanted to move Pelosi.

3. The fact that Warren came out *immediately, *as soon as the In These
Times article appeared, is a very positive sign which shows how the world
is supposed to be and why we need to push for D no votes in the Senate. *In
These Times! A little socialist rag in Chicago! *Warren's office was on it
like *lightning*. Oh, the Bernie forces are mobilizing. Well, here we are,
standing right next to you, reporting for duty. What's your grievance?
That's how the world is supposed to be.

4. The New York Times article is very strong. Look at the subhead. War
powers is right there. The reporter got it and told the story and the
editors got it too. The only thing worse than losing is being a tree that
falls in the forest and doesn't make a sound. When we went down, we made a
sound. That's a kind of victory.

5. NYT confirms that Jared intervened on behalf of the Saudis to strip our
provisions. This is a guy who had his security clearance taken away because
of being an agent of foreign powers. And now we understand the world in
which we live. And the House Democratic leadership is going on about
military aid to Ukraine. Welcome to the desert of the real.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/us/politics/house-ndaa-space-force-leave.html

House Passes $738 Billion Military Bill With Space Force and Parental Leave
A bipartisan group of lawmakers agreed to give troops a pay raise and the
president his Space Force, while jettisoning a slew of measures that would
have reined in the president’s war powers.

By Catie Edmondson
Dec. 11, 2019

WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday passed a $738 billion military policy
bill that would authorize the creation of the Space Force championed by
President Trump as the sixth branch of the military and secure paid
parental leave for more than two million federal workers.

The 377-to-48 vote reflected broad bipartisan support for the compromise
package, one of the nation’s most expensive military policy bills to date.
It passed over the opposition of a bloc of progressive Democrats and
libertarian-minded Republicans who objected to its steep price tag and its
omission of provisions they had proposed to limit the president’s power on
an array of military matters.

Most House Republicans threw their support behind the measure, joining with
Democrats to ensure its passage. It was part of a year-end burst of
bipartisan legislating that has broken out this week, even as the
Democratic-led House moves toward impeaching Mr. Trump.

The approval of the package marked a resolution to months of partisan
fighting over exactly what would be contained in the must-pass legislation.
In July, the House passed its version of the bill, which sought to rein in
Mr. Trump’s authority on policy after policy, over Republican opposition.

That touched off a behind-the-scenes round of haggling in which lawmakers
had to reconcile the House bill with a far less confrontational version
passed in the Republican-controlled Senate. Determined to meet the year-end
deadline for renewing the legislation and demonstrate their party could
legislate on issues of national security even as they pursue the
president’s removal, Democratic negotiators conceded on a series of
hot-button issues.

“This is exactly what the American people have been demanding of
government, that we can actually move forward on legislating, on governing,
to show that we are adults that are able to get things done on issues of
national security,” said Representative Andy Kim, a freshman Democrat who
represents a New Jersey district that voted for Mr. Trump in 2016. “Even in
a time of divided government.”

The Senate is expected to take up the compromise bill and send it to the
president’s desk as early as next week.

But the compromise left some liberal Democrats seething.

While it does not authorize any money to replenish military construction
funds Mr. Trump diverted to pay for his wall on the southern border, it
also does not contain a measure backed by Democrats to prevent him from
raiding the fund in the future. Stronger language that would have forced
the cleanup of a dangerous class of chemicals, known as PFAS, was dropped.
And the final version jettisoned several other provisions passed by House
Democrats: to ban new detainees from being placed at the military detention
facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; to prohibit the sale of certain types of
munitions to Saudi Arabia; and to require Mr. Trump to seek congressional
approval before taking any military action against Iran.

Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, said in a statement that
she would not support the bill even though it contained some amendments she
sponsored. “This bill commits the U.S. to endless involvement in the
Saudi-led war in Yemen, continues funding for endless war” under a 2001
military authorization and “does nothing to prevent the administration from
launching a disastrous war with Iran,” she said.

But Democratic leaders trumpeted the bill for what it did contain: a White
House-approved measure that would extend 12 weeks of paid parental leave to
civilian federal employees, a 3 percent pay raise for troops and the end to
a Defense Department policy known as the widow’s tax, which prevents the
surviving family members of military personnel from receiving their full
benefits.

Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington and the chairman of the
House Armed Services Committee, issued a scathing defense of the bill on
Wednesday, calling it “the most progressive defense bill we have passed in
decades.”

“Throughout the negotiations I failed in one way: I was unable to turn
President Trump, Leader McConnell and Chairman Inhofe into Democrats and
convince them to suddenly accept all of the provisions they despise,” he
said in the statement, referring to Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky,
the majority leader, and James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the chairman of the
Senate Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Smith led the final stages of the negotiations off Capitol Hill and
bargained directly with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and
senior adviser, according to three officials familiar with the private
talks who insisted on anonymity to describe them. Mr. Smith declined on
Wednesday to comment on Mr. Kushner’s role or the broader negotiations.

Most of the provisions in the compromise bill had already been finalized by
the time discussions reached him. But it was Mr. Kushner who helped broker
a deal to create the Space Force, a chief priority of the president’s, in
exchange for the paid parental leave, a measure championed by his wife,
Ivanka Trump, also a senior adviser to the president.

“In the case of the White House, they wanted both,” said Senator Kevin
Cramer, a North Dakota Republican and key ally of Mr. Trump’s who sits on
the Armed Services Committee and has been a vocal backer of Space Force.
“At the end of the day, the president gets two victories.”

Mr. Trump appeared to regard the deal with a measure of amazement on
Wednesday before the vote. “Wow! All of our priorities have made it into
the final NDAA,” he wrote on Twitter, using an acronym for the National
Defense Authorization Act.

It was also Mr. Kushner who intervened on measures targeting Saudi Arabia
that would have prohibited arms sales or military assistance to the
Saudi-led intervention in Yemen. He said they were nonstarters for the
White House, according to the officials.

Representative Ro Khanna of California, who led a series of amendments
seeking to curtail the president’s war powers on Iran and Saudi Arabia,
called the omission of those measures from the final version “astonishing
moral cowardice” in a joint statement with Senator Bernie Sanders,
independent of Vermont.

“We can’t allow the Republicans to continue a policy of expanding military
budgets and foreign intervention with a tactic of throwing us a bone every
year on a progressive policy,” Mr. Khanna said in an interview.

Catie Edmondson is a reporter in the Washington bureau, covering Congress.
@CatieEdmondson
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